FoxRockXArchives

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:39:45 EST

On-line articles, archives and companion materials are accessible through the "FoxRockX" tab at http://portal.dfpug.de/. We provide the entire archive of articles (except for the years 1993-1995) and source code for all FoxTalk past issues. Access information will be sent with confirmation of your subscription.

We are preparing public folder in the document portal for hosting free articles at the following links:

FoxRockX Free Articles http://portal.dfpug.de/dFPUG/Dokumente/FoxRockX/
FoxTalk Free Articles http://portal.dfpug.de/dFPUG/Dokumente/FoxTalk/

We have prepared the online archive of FoxTalk from 1996 till 2006. We are still working on uploading new issues. Subscribers can reach the archive at:

FoxTalk Online Archive http://portaladmin.dfpug.de/dFPUG/Dokumente/FoxTalk/

You will find the following subdirectories with the following number of articles:

WebExtras: 48 online only articles
FoxTalk2007: (under construction, complete issues can be found in PDFIssues directory)
FoxTalk2006: 24 articles (more to be added)
FoxTalk2005: 58 articles
FoxTalk2004: 60 articles
FoxTalk2003: 56 articles
FoxTalk2002: 59 articles
FoxTalk2001: 74 articles
FoxTalk2000: 91 articles
FoxTalk1999: 102 articles
FoxTalk1998: 107 articles
FoxTalk1997: 107 articles
FoxTalk1996: 138 articles
PDFIssues: 124 issues (Jan 1996 to April 2006), recently added 16 issues (May 2006 to December 2007)
Sourcecode: 122 companion files

We offer the following online archive for FoxRockX subscribers:

FoxRockX Online Archive http://portaladmin.dfpug.de/dFPUG/Dokumente/FoxRockX

We have the following files available:

FoxRockX2008: 20 articles, see FoxRockX Issues
PDFIssues: 4 regular issues (March 2008, May 2008, July 2008, September 2008) and 2 free special issues
Sourcecode: 4 companion file (see above) and 1 companion file for the free special issues
Logos: 11 logos for your link to us

FoxRockXIssues

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:09:40 EST

Editor comments: Issue September 2008 added

The fourth regular issue of FoxRockX is soon available. Here the table of contents:

September 2008 - Number 4

1 Introduction by Rick Schummer
3 VFPX: Putting the OutlookNavBar to use by Rick Schummer
11 Deep Dive: Practical Uses for XML, Part 2 by Doug Hennig
17 KitBox: A program is trying to automatically send e-mail by Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek
23 New Ways: Working with text by Tamar Granor, Ph D
27 New Ways: Past or Future Date Range in Reports by Pradip Acharya

July 2008 - Number 3

1 Introduction by Rainer Becker
2 VFPX: ctl32_StatusBar Easy to Implement by Rick Schummer
7 Deep Dive: Practical Uses for XML, Part 1 by Doug Hennig
14 New Ways: Working with work areas by Tamar Granor, Ph D
18 KitBox: Doing a PROPER job by Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek
21 Vista: Displaying form borders in Windows Vista by Uwe Habermann
24 Events: The DevCon Germany 2007 from a visitors perspective by Boudewijn Lutgerink

June 2008 - Free special issue
German version, sponsored by Sybase

1 Advantage Database Server f��href="http://fox.wikis.com/wc.dll?Wiki~VisualFoxPro">Visual FoxPro Entwickler by Doug Hennig

May 2008 - Number 2

1 Introduction by Rainer Becker
2 New Ways: Use the right loop for the job by Tamar Granor, Ph D
6 New Ways: Stroking the Keys by Jim Booth
8 Deep Dive: A Generic Import Utility, Part 2 by Doug Hennig
15 KitBox: All a matter of form by Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek
21 VFPX: Property / Method Dialog Replacements by Rick Schummer

April 2008 - Free special issue
sponsored by Sybase

1 Advantage Database Server for Visual FoxPro Developers by Doug Hennig

March 2008 - Number 1

1 Introduction, see FoxRockX Introduction by Rainer Becker
2 VFPX: Open Source Extensions by Rick Schummer
9 Deep Dive: A Generic Import Utility, Part 1 by Doug Hennig
15 New Ways: Parsing und Building File and Path Names by Tamar Granor, Ph D
19 KitBox: Managing Global Variables by Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek
23 Blog: Advantage Database Server V9.0, available soon by Andy Kramek

TOC September 2008 - Number 4

Intro: Career Investment 101 - How can I become a better developer?
Rick Schummer
Rick gets asked the question: how can I become a better developer? He explains how he attempts to stay at the top of his game in software development.

VFPX: Putting the OutlookNavBar to use
Rick Schummer
The Microsoft Outlook user interface was all the rage a few years ago. The last two versions of Outlook include the navigation bar with separate panes for you to manage email, calendar, contacts, tasks, etc. Developers scrambled to duplicate this interface in VFP applications. Emerson Stanton Reed first created the Outlook2003Bar. This month Rick is going to show you how to implement the most current OutlookNavBar and demonstrate some new flexibility included in the July 2008 release.

Deep Dive: Practical Uses for XML, Part 2
Doug Hennig
In part 1 of this two-part article, Doug examined the basics of XML: what it is, how its structured, how to create XML, and how to parse it. This article focuses on why XML is useful and shows some practical examples of how hes used XML in various applications.

KitBox: A program is trying to automatically send e-mail
Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek
Sending E-mail from within an application is often more than a luxury, and there are many ways of doing it in Visual FoxPro. Outlook automation is a common approach and works well, but the version of Collaboration Data Objects that was introduced with Windows 2000 offers a more flexible and extensible approach that allows you to generate E-mail without needing a specific E-mail client installed, or even a work-around for the security patch introduced in Office 2000 SP2. In this months column Andy and Marcia show how to implement CDO in Visual FoxPro.

New Ways: Working with text
Tamar Granor, Ph D
VFPs tools for working with text have improved as the importance of text files has grown. In a world where we need to parse and create HTML, XML, and other text formats, using the best VFP has to offer makes the job a lot easier.

TimeFrame Class Autoset Past or Future Date Range in Reports
Pradip Acharya
Many financial and forecasting reports require a start date and an end date to be entered in the Report Setup interface. This can be a past or a future time period. A sales summary for the last completed Quarter or a preventive maintenance forecast for the next month are typical examples. Its not easy for the user to figure out the limiting dates in the first place and secondly, users in general are averse to typing in dates in the stipulated format. The TimeFrame class was created to make it easy to autoset a date range with a click. Select any past or future time period from a dropdown list and the two dates are filled in programmatically. The user can then override either date or select the Open Dates option to enter a date range of choice.

TOC July 2008 - Number 3

VFPX: ctl32_StatusBar Easy to Implement
Rick Schummer
The VFPX project is a set of replacement controls designed to improve the user interface experience of your applications. In this issue of FoxRockX, Rick shows you how simple it is to implement a modern replacement for the Visual FoxPro native status bar.

Deep Dive: Practical Uses for XML, Part 1
Doug Hennig
XML can be a great way to store some types of data or transfer data from one application to another. In the first of a two-part article, Doug discusses what XML is and how to use it.

New Ways: Working with work areas
Tamar Granor, Ph D
Although we have had techniques that let us ignore work area numbers and letters for many versions, some developers still write code that addresses work areas directly. This month, I will look at how to write code without worrying about work area letters or numbers, and how to depend as little as possible on the currently selected work area. The result is better code that is easier to write and maintain.

KitBox: Doing a PROPER job
Marcia Akins and Andy Kramek
Correctly formatting blocks of text is a problem that we all have to deal with from time to time. While VFP has functions for forcing text to either upper or lower case, its handling of mixed case text suffers from a number of shortcomings that make it essentially unusable in all but the simplest of circumstances. This month Andy and Marcia are discussing the issues surrounding the task of formatting text and come up with a class that does a better job of handling mixed case text.

Vista: Displaying form borders in Windows Vista
Uwe Habermann and Venelina Jordanova
If you are running VFP 9 applications in Windows Vista, you will know the problem. Forms with a Border Style setting other than 3 sometimes appear without a form border. In principle this bug shall have been fixed with VFP 9 SP 2. But then why are the forms often displayed incorrectly?

Events: The DevCon Germany 2007 from a visitors perspective
Boudewijn Lutgerink
While visiting the DevCon Germany last year I took the chance to listen to Steven Blacks sessions about niche markets and So fox is dead, now what?

TOC May 2008 - Number 2
New Ways: Use the right loop for the job
Tamar Granor, Ph D
Learning to use the right loop for the situation will make your code faster and more readable. Both of those goals are worth breaking old habits and building new ones. Happy looping!

New Ways: Stroking the Keys
Jim Booth
The mouse is commonly used for many tasks in windows. In real heads down data entry operations it is often more efficient for the users to keep their fingers on the home row. To accomplish this, it is necessary to provide keystroke equivalents for mouse actions like selecting an item from a menu or clicking on a button, even access to functionality that may not be represented by any menu option or button.

Deep Dive: A Generic Import Utility, Part 2
Doug Hennig
Part 1 of this two-part series presented a set of classes making up a generic import utility you can add to your applications to provide import capabilities from a variety of data sources. Part 2 focuses on the user interface components.

KitBox: All a matter of form
Marcia Akins, Andy Kramek
This month Andy and Marcia create a class to handle the creation of word documents from templates using named Bookmarks and Tables to indicate where data should be inserted. The class was originally designed for use with Office 2003, but will work without modification in Office XP and Office 2000. It will also work in Office 2007 but, in that version, creates the new ".docx" file type by default.

VFPX: Property / Method Dialog Replacements
Rick Schummer
In the first issue of FoxRockX, Rick provided you an overview of VFPX and the Code Plex Web site where VFPX projects are established and maintained. In this issue he is starting a series of deepdives into the various projects of VFPX with the intent of exposing the productivity you can gain using VFPX tools, and enhance your applications using the various VFPX components. First up are two of the tools he uses numerous times a day: the New Property and Method dialog and the Edit Property/Method dialog replacements.

TOC April 2008 - Free ADS issue
Advantage Database Server for Visual FoxPro Developers
Doug Hennig
Advantage Database Server is a full-featured, high-performance client/server database engine. Interestingly, it can use Visual FoxPro DBF files as its data store and provides a number of benefits over accessing these files directly. This article introduces Advantage and discusses how to access it from VFP applications.

TOC March 2008 - Number 1
VFPX: Open Source Extensions
Rick Schummer
In 2007 I presented a session on VFPX at four Visual FoxPro Conferences in the United States and Europe. During each of the sessions I asked, How many of you have heard of VFPX? Approximately 10 to 15 percent of the people sitting in the room raised their hand. Since I believe VFPX is a significant part of the future of Visual FoxPro, this is a disturbing revelation. The goal of this series of articles is to introduce you to the VFPX open source project, and to do some high level overviews of the different tools and components, as well as some deepdives to show how they can be used in your day-to-day development of Visual FoxPro solutions. This article will describe VFPX, provide a short history of this project, show you where on the Internet you will find VFPX, and provide an overview of the Web site......

Deep Dive: A Generic Import Utility, Part 1
Doug Hennig
Data entry forms arent the only way your users want to put data into their applications. Often, important data is stored in other applications, so you need a way to import that data into your application. This article, part 1 of a two-part series, presents a generic import utility you can add to your applications to provide import capabilities from a variety of data sources......

New Ways: Parsing und Building File and Path Names
Tamar Granor
I started using FoxBase+ nearly 20 years ago. In the evolution from that remarkably able product to Visual FoxPro 9, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of new elements have been added to the FoxPro programming language. Each new version has introduced not only new capabilities, but new ways to do old things.

KitBox: Managing Global Variables
Marcia Akins, Andy Kramek
The use of Public Variables in FoxPro Applications has long been regarded as poor design. However there are many situations in which a variable that can be accessed, or updated, from anywhere in the application is really the only feasible way of handling things. In this article, Andy and Marcia design a data driven "Variable Manager" class that can be either be instantiated directly, or can be attached to an application object, to manage variables that need to be globally available...

Blog: Advantage Database Server V9.0, available soon
Andy Kramek
Sybase Anywhere have been working on a Visual FoxPro compatible version of the Advantage Database Server for some time and, just before Christmas, the long-awaited Version 9.0 was released in Beta. You can download the Beta version (time limited until mid of March, beta license expiring on March 28th) from here:....

UpcomingEvents

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 13:27:03 EST

A place to list upcoming Visual FoxPro events like conferences, meetings, user groups, open training sessions...
Closest at the top please, and please remove past events.

SccText

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:35:31 EST

Editor comments: See also the related VFPx project,
SCCTEXT.PRG converts FoxPro Advisor some time ago.

SCCTEXT is a program begging for a good refactoring. Changes I would like to see include:

A persistant object instantiated on first call.
Evaluation of more efficient string-handling and FileToStr()/StrToFile() functionality replacing low-level file functions
Fixing the methods sorting bug identified by Mark Wilden
Potential interaction with Project Hook and Project objects

First post. Comments welcomed. -- Ted Roche

VisualFoxProWiki

FoxRockXArchives

FoxRockXIssues

UpcomingEvents

SccText